A good physics undergrad could assemble this and demonstrate it successfully in a day. It's really a Mach Zender interferometer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%E2%80%93Zehnder_interfero...) which is one of the nicest designs for doing quantum information experiments.
The laser they use isn't anything super-special, although it isn't like what you'd get if you bought a laser pointer or a cheap laser engraver. The beam size is very fine and the beam shape is round. Most of the other parts are fairly generic but precisely made. The most exciting part is the beamsplitters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter since they are key to assembling the interferometer itself.
A good physics undergrad could assemble this and demonstrate it successfully in a day. It's really a Mach Zender interferometer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%E2%80%93Zehnder_interfero...) which is one of the nicest designs for doing quantum information experiments.
The laser they use isn't anything super-special, although it isn't like what you'd get if you bought a laser pointer or a cheap laser engraver. The beam size is very fine and the beam shape is round. Most of the other parts are fairly generic but precisely made. The most exciting part is the beamsplitters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_splitter since they are key to assembling the interferometer itself.